Zero Beat 11 2015

Next meeting will be in the main clubhouse at Country Club Estates at 2417 Lacosta Dr. in Bartlett.

Program and Elections

November is elections and we are fortunate that several folks have come forward to run for office.

Nominees at this time are:

Please come out and vote

We will have a short “show and tell’ type program on Rick Kanschat’s new drone. Rick recently acquired a new Yuneec drone and will bring it to the meeting and show it off. We had the occasion to fly it out at the farm and it is impressive. I doubt we can demo it in the dark but we will bring some video of the test at the farm. Rick as you know is frugal and has a plan for free room and board. He has mounted a laser on the drone and plans to fly it very near the airport. He says this has the opportunity to provide free room and board for several years.

Christmas Dinner – note changes

The Christmas dinner will be at Macaroni Grill this year at the corner of Germantown Rd and Highway 64. It is on the south west corner. We will start at 6:30 pm. The room is slightly smaller than the room at Coletta’s so we have a few changes. First, please RSVP. The room holds about 44 folks, so the first 44 will be in the room. We can handle a few more but it will be tight. Second; we only have one gift table so we ask each person to bring one and only one,gift per person. Unisex is best. Something in the $5-10 range is recommended. The club will have several special prizes we will draw for, after we draw for the gifts. The dinner costs $19 and includes coffee and tea. The menu is attached. They can handle a few off menu items for special cases. Deserts will be furnished by the club. Hopefully this will go better and faster than Coletta’s.

Dues

Please pay your 2016 dues to Treasurer Art Barnett. This helps fund the club activities for the year and we will know how to budget. Please fill out a membership form if there are any changes in your information.

St. Jude Marathon

The St. Jude Marathon is coming up in December and volunteers are always needed. It is a great event and if you can help contact Roger Schlichter who is coordinating it again this year. I have worked it the past two years and it is a great event and a lot of fun.

Estate Sales

The club helping with a couple of estate sales and hope to have equipment lists ready shortly. Our plan is to offer the equipment at good prices to all hams with special discounts to members first. Be sure your membership dues are current to take advantage of these special offers.

Repeaters

We are working on some repeater mods for the St. Jude Marathon to make communications better. We have put the Kenwood TKR851 back in service at LeBonheur and linked it to the 145.210 at LeBonheur. They appear to be working great. I hit the UHF consistently solid with 2 watts on the south east side of Bartlett. The Fusion has been moved to WKNO. It is on a dual band antenna with the 147.030 at the 150 ft level on the north east side. This should provide better coverage for the folks out east who may be experimenting with Fusion. We had some minor intermod issues with the Fusion at LeBonheur and it appears to be better at KNO so far. The Fusion in exactly the same configuration at LeBonheur as the Kenwood was not as sensitive. The Fusion test at KNO will be a good one under all the high power RF.